


Meta: On The Nature and History of Their Lifebond, In This 'Verse

by lalaietha



Series: Renegotiations of Fate [6]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 00:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: Meta about who Van and Lendel have come to be, in this 'verse, at the age of thirty-odd.
Relationships: Vanyel Ashkevron/Tylendel Frelennye
Series: Renegotiations of Fate [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/15084
Comments: 1
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one's more directly c/p from the post and discussion I had on/around Tumblr and DW circa Oct 27th. It is thus somewhat less organized.

Posted to tumblr, Oct 27/2019:  
**Me**:

I realized this morning, genuinely out of the blue (I haven’t thought about this ‘verse in weeks, since the last time discussion of Valdemar went around, and then only glancingly, and prior to that I hadn’t thought about it in years), that in the set-up I have for [this 'verse] , there is no way the events of Magic’s Promise era would not outright require ‘Lendel’s physical presence out at Van’s parents’ place. 

What with the whole “he basically leads the handful of spies Valdemar has for things that are Too Morally Grey for Heralds to Handle Well” thing, plus also the clear issues of blood relation that he’s more or less the only one left who knows what’s what thing, etc. 

And that, given ‘Lendel is also (at this point) unrepentantly small-scale spiteful and vindictive*, and given that he absolutely holds all the grudges at Withen and will continue to do so at least until the day Withen specifically verbally apologizes for being a homophobic abusive shithead Vanyel’s entire life (’Lendel is NOT holding his breath on this one), AND given that ‘Lendel was low-key exceedingly aggravated Van had to come out here at all when he should just be in a remote cabin somewhere SLEEPING, and finally and particularly given that ‘Lendel would have a shared-emotional-context for all of Van’s resurgent feelings of childhood-psyche-based unwantedness and self-loathing and conviction of unlovedness/un-love-able-ness … 

… there is just about no way he did not arrange at least once if not more than once to fuck Van into blissful stupor, of the whole life-bond-enabled “hi I can not only demonstrate through finely practiced physical intimacy that I adore and love and desire you but can also literally wrap your mind in my mind dwelling on that fact while I do so” sort, in his teenage-bedroom, as eight layers of Highly Symbolic and Emphatic Statement. 

Yfandes suspects she’s PROBABLY supposed to be above finding that extremely gratifying and approving of it quite so much, being that whole Enlightened Divine Returned Dead thing, but also cannot be fucking bothered because gods she hates this place and what it does to her Chosen’s mind and she really, really wishes it WERE just better to talk him into giving his birth-family the finger once and for all, so frankly, this is fine. 

And I figured there were at least a couple people out there who might also find this a gratifying image, so I share. 

*(Heralds are moral and have to try to rise above these things; his job, as far as he’s concerned, is to keep people from using this to stab Heralds’ in the kidneys when they’re not looking and as such he is excused Being Nice At All Times. 

This mostly results in what quite a lot of our-world psychological professionals would consider “reasonable emotional boundaries” and “sensible emotional self-protection from manipulation” and so on, but this is Valdemar we’re talking about.)

**grison-in-space**: _… what are the odds Ty also did so loudly enough to be overheard by Someone (up to and including service staff, given the hiring habits and tendency for nepotism and gossip in the Keep) in order to make a particular sort of point? On the one hand, it would feel so good to him on that petty level; on the other, Withen’s bullshit as a response might be particularly difficult to deal with in the middle of a fairly sensitive diplomatic situation, and the eventual fallout is likely to be hardest on Van._

_Also, what are the odds of Tylendel being supposedly exiled to a totally different set of rooms and / or pointedly referred to as Van’s “friend” the whole time? Vanyel’s self imposed celibacy offered a lot of easy outs for Withen in the canon timeline to pick whatever belief about Van’s love life was most convenient for himself at any given time ; I cannot imagine that Tylendel would put up with that shit for any length of time. _

**Me**:

Lendel 100% operates on a policy of “I’m going to act like I would at Court and anyone else who wants to fight over it can find out how many fucks I don’t give.” 

[more babble under readmore]

Part of this is genuine capacity: one of the behind-the-scenes things involved is that he and Van have had a couple of decades at this point of figuring out where their mutual edges are, where the things each of them can and can’t tolerate or do, with a much more direct view of where that really is CAN’T rather than WON’T than most couples get. 

So among other things it is a twenty-years-established fact that “I will do what I do and exist as myself and OTHER people can decide whether or not to make something of it” is in some ways literally how Lendel survives without perpetually living in severe self-destructive catastrophic depression, which changes the dynamic bit. 

So you know: Treesa absolutely had assigned Lendel rooms way over on the other side of the Keep! And then the Royal Delegate Master Frelennye Instructed that his stuff be moved to the rooms right next Herald Vanyel’s quarters in a quiet but authoritative voice and since everyone knows he kills people sometimes (in an Everyone Knows kind of way) and the worst Lady Treesa or Lord Withen is going to do is shout a lot they … move his stuff. 

This is roughly the same level of Plausible Deniability that an unmarried couple of any gender arrangement At Court would take (after all, he is here because he and Herald Vanyel are Investigating a Thing, which might go off at any time, so of course it makes sense that they should have easy access to one another, why wouldn’t they?) and all in a context where if Withen wants to make Issue of it, HE’S going to have to start it, HE’S going to have to a) make accusations and statements out loud, and then b) own them as Public Statements To An Official Of The Crown, and c) deal with the fallout. 

Likewise, if Withen wants to ADMIT a) his servants are eavesdropping on Heralds and Royal Delegates in their private apartments, b) that they are then gossiping about it all over the place, and also c) that he, Lord Withen, LISTENS to and IS CONCERNED about servant gossip then SURE, THEY CAN DISCUSS THIS PUBLICLY. 

Withen’s real problem in dealing with Tylendel is that the Frelennyes were actually much richer than he is/more influential so to be frank especially after all he’s survived Tylendel’s able to wield noble entitlement kind of like a club. And since he’s not only the spymaster, he’s quite literally the one of the actual management trio whose JOB it is to be the lightning rod for rumours/etc (so they can get on with their jobs highly anonymously) it’s like what are you going to do, Withen - ruin his reputation? 

And in a PR battle that tries to drag in Herald-Mage Vanyel, saviour of the realm, saviour of the Army, folk hero and so on, WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO WIN? And how much thought do you think is even going to flash across the Crown and the Collegium’s minds about who to back and how hard? 

And who is going to get fucked up by the collateral, m’lud? You really want to go there? HUH? 

Or maybe you can just shut up and put up for the good of the Realm for once, and you’ll get EXACTLY the same level of polite deniability any host-hostess of an unmarried Heraldic couple would get, like EVERYONE understands the rules of these things work, and you’ll LIKE IT. 

Van mostly deals with this by pretending not to notice it happening and not actually letting either of his parents corner him ALONE, while pretending to be totally oblivious to any loaded comments they make in company, as he knows damn well neither of them will actually say anything where anyone else can hear and also that once there’s any time BETWEEN this and the next time he visits or whatever, they’ll try to pretend it didn’t happen for the same reasons they’re not going to pick those fights. 

He was kind of concerned about sibling fallout but apparently every single one of them is Really Goddamn Tired of dealing with their parents so watching someone rock Withen especially back on his heels in ways that cannot in any way be said to be their fault was apparently more popular than he expected. 

He does have SOME small amounts of guilt because Van makes Catholic guilt look healthy in comparison but it can’t seem to get much traction around the exhaustion, stress and also his inner sixteen year old’s vindictive delight/sense of validation. So it’s just sort of there. Which compared to much of his other guilt is just not that … effective. 

**grison-in-space:** _This makes total sense! And especially wrt Van’s sibs dealing with Withen. I’m honestly vaguely interested in what the additional pressure of Tylendel going “you really want to push me, man?” at Withen and Vanyel casually ignoring it does to Vanyel’s relationship with Meke in particular._

_Also, the whole thing with Medren is going to be more interesting with Tylendel there–how does he approach?_

_(stop me if I’m asking too many questions, I’m just enjoying this) _

**Me**: 

(I am totally not procrastinating why would you think this ahem … )

One factor that’s totally relevant is that by this time a priori Tylendel approaches all new social situations with a very deliberate and calculated mix of calm authority + slightly mischievous charm and maintains this unless and until someone actually Starts Pushing Shit. He does this in part because it’s so easy for that friendly calm slightly laughing smile to turn into razor-teeth grin and then slide BACK to laughing-smile if the person takes the hint and Backs The Fuck Off/Down.

[readmore again for the sake of reading pages >.> ]

He picked this up significantly from spending so much time around Bards, which he totally does these days since Bards and Minstrels are in many ways the backbone of the royal espionage machine.

Now I mean: they are not all of it and much like backbones in fact sometimes they are the wrong tool because they are so obviously visible if you know what you’re looking at, but primarily they are just the news, communications, propaganda and general intelligence service of the realm, and one of Tylendel’s co-Delegates is totally a senior Bard.

(Their official title is Royal Delegates, without any “to the” afterwards because basically they are Royal Delegates to EVERYTHING. Their honourific is Master or Mistress. In someways they operate much like the fictional/original Mycroft Holmes in that beyond people being aware that they exist - and particularly that Tylendel himself exists, because the other two really often are “oh yeah and those two” and that’s deliberate - nobody is entirely sure what they DO and beyond them everything is very flexible and very, very shadowy.)

And so this technique of people management is one that Tylendel picked up as pretty appropriate to himself: he is still ridiculously attractive-charming-young in basic, and the combination of the calm, slightly wry authority and the deliberately learned social charm is one that he can maintain pretty easily even when he’s having Really Bad Days.

(Because both of these boys still have to wrangle the fact that they’re both trauma-disordered as fuck, right. I mean just because even most of their setting doesn’t recognize how trauma actually works doesn’t mean this doesn’t remain true, because it does, and Tylendel still lives with the double and significant trauma of having his twin-bond with his brother broken via his brother’s murder and then having Gala rip the Companion bond out of his psyche before throwing herself into her own suicide - he has bad days, and bad weeks, and weeks where he’s operating out of sheer flat stubborn while pretty clinically depressed, so it matters that this is a mask he can wear with relatively little effort even when behind his eyes the crazy bits of his brain are chanting about how nice suicide would be in sing-song voices.)

And the reason this is the one he picks and deliberately teaches himself, from his Bardic contact (because they are tooootally taught this stuff and the wide variety of it, explicitly), is also that it works really well! It’s actually non-threatening, to an extent that it can mitigate the fact that he is an Inherently Threatening Figure in public folklore and people are like OH WOW THE SCARY GUY IS BEING NICE YES, LET’S ALL BE NICE.

Because among the nobility and the serving-class attached to the nobility (aka those who hear Noble Gossip allllllll the time) Tylendel is a very disquieting and frightening figure. They all know that Heralds are involved in espionage, of course, but anyone who’s close enough to power to be playing games also knows that while it might not look like Nobility Honour, Heralds … have this ethics thing that they just can’t quite cross. And they have difficulty even working with people who can cross it. And this impedes a certain kind/amount of espionage work.

(Now there are actually a couple of Heralds whose Companions, even, are cold-blooded enough that they’re actually quite scary, but people don’t really KNOW about this, or that the quiet Herald who everyone thinks is just there are a liaison or something who is the third Delegate is actually even scarier than ‘Lendel is, but that’s okay. Shhhhhh.)

‘Lendel is not a Herald. In fact everyone knows that he LOST his Companion and is as yet still alive: there’s even rumours that he lost said Companion via said Companion repudiating him although nobody can quite get that confirmed, and talking to Heralds about it gets the Scary Herald Wall of Hostile Silence.

This is very scary. Except that Tylendel then also lives in this weird honoured Court space where the Queen used to like him just fine and the King likes him and he’s very polite and his offices don’t seem to … overtly? do? much? they handle some specific delicate negotiations and investigate some specific crimes or intrigues and it’s all very civilized and yet also when they investigate things there always seems to be something big that comes to light and also the heads of, say, international crime syndicates quietly die of factors unrelated to anything, seemingly.

It’s creepy.

So then you have this Charming Person (with an understated wry sense of humour) and he’s quite handsome and he’s very polite and also he might be an assassin with absolute free rein to do anything he wants ever in service of the Crown, and you’ve probably been primed to be unnerved by him except now he’s being very nice.

It’s a potent bit of social engineering!

And in shifting from that pose he will always, always (at this point) let the other person move things along first, even if it involves biting his tongue until it bleeds. It’s just …he will do a thing! And it will be very friendly and reasonable and charming and you can go along with that thing and it will stay that way!

Or you can start pushing back and the Contest can start. And in many circumstances it does in fact become a very complex dance of who gives when and why and how and it’s not like he becomes a totally immovable object, as such, because there are times when well shite your opponent has brought more to this game than you thought and it’s time to reassess!

It’s just that’s … not going to happen with Withen, as such, because Withen has zero cards he dares play, and even if he did, none of them are actually going to harm Tylendel (and/or Van) more than they’re going to harm Withen himself.

Tylendel might rather he not play them at all, because it is true they’re not optimal! But if he does, Withen’s still going to come out the worse for it.

Fortunately Withen is old and experienced enough to recognize this. (And actually also guilty/uncomfortable/ashamed enough of his own past behaviour not to actually have his own full cooperation, so to speak: Withen is after all a man in conflict with himself. And fundamentally he damn well does know he was a shitty, horrible father to Vanyel, and that his reasons and excuses for that are very thin indeed, and on top of that he’s aware that with the majority of the kingdom he himself WILL LOOK like the asshole here.)

(Like really in many ways if Withen were a redditor on that Am I The Asshole thread he’s the kind of guy who would write up a very self-justifying explanation of the situation and then spend six months arguing with the people in the comments who are like “yeah dude you are TOTALLY the asshole here wow” and also being horrified by what KIND of people are agreeing that he’s not the asshole, and then maybe two years of work later might manage to stop being the asshole. He is a prime example of “you don’t actually have to be evil to be an emotionally abusive parent”, because he’s not evil, but he was absolutely an abusive parent.)

All of which babble is meant to trail down to: Meke has never previously met Tylendel. Tylendel has been, up to this point, a mysterious black hole of Influence on Vanyel to the family, with various aspects of that being more or less relevant.

But Meke also has way, way less personal ego and identity invested in … .well a lot of stuff, just because he’s younger and a sibling, rather than parent, and way more aware that his brother is A Really Big Deal. Like, A REALLY Big Deal. And so is his brother’s boyfriend who we never talk about.

Like yeah Withen is a major border-landlord and holder, but Court and who’s who in the Court matters even out here and also while we’re at it Lissa is now DEEPLY EMBEDDED in Guard politics and whooo boy does the army keep a close eye on what’s going on in Court because it is going to affect who goes where and what’s going on (and which outlying lords are going to be a Fucking Pain In The Ass about cooperating as per their actual duties with the upkeep of whatever Guard units are assigned there! and so on) and Lissa has NOT FAILED TO NOTICE that over the course of the Karse campaign she has absolutely shifted, in her associated identity-markers, from “Lord Withen’s daughter” to “Herald-Mage Vanyel’s sister” and that the latter means a LOT MORE to the average trooper especially but even to her fellow officers.

And she has been writing to Meke about this <s>in no small part because she still resents everything about the entire way her family treats her brother and Lissa can be JUST as petty as the father who kept trying to steal Van’s horse</s>. 

So to start with Meke has an increasingly different take on his BROTHER coming home for a rest than his father does because this is … a thing, that is happening. And all the moreso when the brother who shows up honestly looks like hell, inasmuch as Vanyel is capable of looking like hell.

Then you have the legendary (family-legend wise) Tylendel Frelennye actually show up … and be a tall, good-looking, personable-charismatic, actually extremely polite, well-dressed in an understated way and wearing a sword and dagger that he is clearly very, very comfortable using, who has been specifically delegated - via an actual charter with royal seal - The Authority To Deal With This Whole Huge Fucking Mess As He Sees Fit, with Withen charged by the crown to aid him.

… this is, shall we say, A Dynamic.

And Meke _has_ been bashing his head in many ways unsuccessfully against Withen about all kinds of problems that Withen just WON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE WORLD IS CHANGING GDI and okay many of his own subsequent choices have not been great (The Famous Stud) but at least HE HAS A REASON FOR IT and maybe if his dad LISTENED FOR FIVE MINUTES he could have come up with something else (seethe, seethe, FRUSTRATEEEEEED ARGH) so he’s not actually inclined to automatically react defensively on his father’s behalf to the whole authority thing, and his awareness of what LISSA has been saying about how the REST of the world sees their brother means that he kind of has … second-hand embarrassment? over how other people (including Tylendel’s secretary and other small retinue and his Guard escort, tbh, right there and then) would see/are seeing how Withen is reacting and treating either of the other two men.

Like oh my god dad stahp PEOPLE CAN SEE US.

(Meke is, in effect, having the same moment Lizzie Bennet did after she realized how her mother absolutely came off like a total gold-digger and how much cause Darcy would actually have to think that Jane was, at Mrs Bennet’s bequest, Just After Bingley’s Money. It is just about as mortifying and he doesn’t like it omg.)

So there is … a slight inclination not, at least, to MIRROR his dad’s embarrassing behaviour! So he is polite. And if he’s a little stiff, politeness gets friendliness back and Tylendel was a noble son for most of his life so while this is not his deal anymore he is totally capable of conversing with polite seeming interest about the potentialities of a new breeding program for mounts for guards and other armsmen and VERY good (at this point) at framing suggestions or criticisms in ways that don’t make people defensive and Meke is so in no way subtle or aware enough to realize he is being Made Friends With or anything here, but that’s totally what is happening.

Lissa IS politically aware enough, when she and her cohort show up, to go “oh wow look at him Manage people” but on the other hand she was always more or less on Van’s side anyway and her only quibble was always “oh no he is setting himself up for Everything Being Terrible” on the sexuality angle anyway.

Also she’s not even that interested in men (or women, or anything) and she has to admit she would probably hit that so she really cannot fault her brother’s taste, wow. Not that she would EVER say that aloud.

IIRC the very first incredibly-embarrassing moment of “gay = paedophile” thing that involved Medren was before the “holy shit our client kingdom just exploded” problem, and would thus be before Tylendel shows up so it probably still happened more or less like it did except instead of Grief-Haunted Reflections it would lead to a “so I just tranced so I could boost the mind-call all the way out there Van because I could feel that burst of embarrassed-angry-frustrated OH MY GOD MY FAMILY WHY emotion ALL THE WAY HERE, LOUDLY, so what the FUCK just happened?” conversation leading to “ … oh for fuck’s sake” and probably a better mindset all around. XD


	2. From Dreamwidth, Oct 28:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things I elaborated on from the previous on the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly c/ped from my (locked) DW, and archived here.

In no particular order, all circa _Magic's Promise_ beginning-of-novel: 

\--> probably the most important thing is that it's been almost twenty years since Shit Went Down. They have been, in all meaningful ways, married for seventeen-eighteen years in a marriage where divorce is physically not an option, where both of them are Mindmages _and_ lifebonded which means while they can sort of keep secrets they can't keep secret the fact that they're keeping secrets, so to speak. Additionally, Vanyel is Chosen: he is a perpetual full colour trigger for remembering exactly the worst part of what Tylendel lost. 

They have had some _very hard times_. They have taken each other apart to the seams more than once, and it has been Not Good. Tylendel got his position (well, the starter-position he began in which led to this position) in no small part because they needed to find him something all-consuming and significant to do, or else he was going to drive them both insane and off a cliff somewhere for real this time. They then had to figure out how to deal with the fact that Tylendel does have a harsher and more shades-of-grey concept of morality than Heralds are encouraged to have and there are things he's willing and indeed insists are necessary to do that Vanyel isn't comfortable with and Van's also had to outright wrestle with and often confront the implicit hypocrisy that Heralds are occasionally <s>frequently</s> prone to and they get the very difficult job of having to do that without ever being unaware of how the other one is FEELING about things, even if they're managing to shield enough to keep specific thoughts from bleeding over. 

In many ways they had to invent a lot of DBT concepts and techniques from scratch, by themselves, via trial and error, with no overarching theory of mind and psyche to do it with. 

In the Many Worlds theory there are absolutely universes out there where they failed at this process at some point or other and are both dead, lbr. There just are. But to get a universe where they're both still alive, and Vanyel is able to be an active, useful Herald-Mage, they had to figure it out. So they did. But they did so THROUGH the hard shit, not by skipping it. 

\--> Vanyel is absolutely the bad kind of workaholic and nothing about the change in universe makes him less overworked and overstretched than he is in canon, and at the same time there have totally been times he's tagged back to Haven to ask Savil to make sure that Tylendel has actually eaten ANYTHING in the last forty eight hours, because Tylendel has ongoing depression problems. To put it mildly. 

Having A Job is actually of benefit on that scale because having things to do will give him the ability to physically force himself out of bed, into adequately clean clothing/clean presentation to do the job, and let him force himself to eat enough that he is not going to fall over from lack of blood sugar or die of malnutrition: it gives him a REASON that he can force himself to treat food as fuel, etc. "You are part of the vital espionage protection of this kingdom" means that he can force food down his throat and get out of bed and bathe. "If you lie here any longer you may starve to death by accident" has historically sometimes been insufficient. 

This totally also means, however, that Tylendel can turn STOP IMITATING ME I AM A HORRIBLE WARNING NOT A GOOD EXAMPLE back on Van when Van is failing all his self-care rolls ever (which is usually). This is in no small part because at this point in his survival (can you really call it recovery?) Tylendel has by and large completely externalized the depressions and mood disturbances and illnesses as something that happen to him. He can't necessarily do anything about them, and the insight doesn't necessarily mean he can control or make the bad round stop, but he parses the depressive episodes the way that one might parse chronic pain. 

It means he's able to go "yes I KNOW the massive self-loathing is maladaptive I just can't make it STOP right now and that makes it very hard to do anything except work and sleep", which in turn enables him to go STOP THAT at other people. DO NOT BE HIM, PEOPLE. 

\--> having both of them around actually makes Savil a better grumpy-maternal figure for both of them: guilt and grief impaired a lot of her ability to really stand in that role in a way he needed with Vanyel in canon-verse, whereas that doesn't so much happen here but what DOES happen here is Conclusive Proof that actually she should be MORE nosy and demand to know MORE THINGS about what is going on in both of their heads. 

It took her a while to get comfortable with just how bleak and nihilistic Tylendel's sense of humour/etc have to be, as a coping mechanism, and to recognize that when he irritably responds to the question of "why haven't you eaten yet today" with "BECAUSE I WANT TO DIE, TEACHER" this does not represent an actual increase in anything, it's just him engaging directly and baldly with the fact that suicidality makes self-care hard even if you're definitely not going to follow through with it and THAT'S ANNOYING, but she actually adjusts fairly well once that's clear, and is able to help Vanyel adjust. 

In turn because she doesn't feel the need to self-protectively DISENGAGE from treating either of them like a son, she is a lot better able to provide Vanyel straight up comfort of someone older telling him they'll figure shit out and giving him a hug when he needs it, which is honestly a lot. You can FEEL the unconscious but present distance in canon, which is less there in this world where both her emotional children are still present. Hilariously, since she's still about the least femme you can get, the gender dynamics at play still do make this into a thing where Vanyel can come home and plop on a couch and put his head on her shoulder, in spite of the ways that this is totally inaccessible to him from anyone else BUT Tylendel. Which is good, especially when it's something ABOUT Tylendel that's making him want to pull his hair out. 

\--> one of the things that's always a bit complex to wrangle is that although their expression thereof would probably never ping most people's radar, by inclination both in kink and in relationship style, Tylendel is absolutely dom and Vanyel is absolutely sub. This is complex because in no way is that a dynamic they can persist in for any kind of long-term because quite honestly Tylendel shouldn't be allowed to look after a potted plant and everyone involved (including Savil and Yfandes) is well aware of this. It's something they're absolutely, well, used to by this point, after that seventeen-eighteen years and is mostly a very wistful slight regret. It's not that they can't EVER fit into those roles; it's just that they can't do it without maintaining a tiny part of them Watching, they can't just relax and be in the moment that much. 

(Not that they think of it in those terms, mind, but that's what it is.)

(Both of them would absolutely and unhesitatingly agree that the rare occasion when they can just Be That Way for even a few hours tends to result in the most spectacular sex they have.) 

(All of the above absolutely is germane to the whole incident(s) of "I am now going to tease and fuck you into a blissful puddle in your old bed in your old room in your father's keep and this is totally what's happening right now", along with Yfandes' vague sense that she proooobably should have flagged and stopped that whole thing because that's one of the things she DOES but like . . . also . . . .

. . . .she's just saying that like . . . WERE she a human again . . . in Tylendel's position . . . .she'd pretty much do the same thing except probably LESS discreetly because like he's at least still inhabiting plausible deniability and human!her would probably, like, be so much more confrontational as well maybe up to the point of sending a note saying "by the way I fucked your child senseless you piece of shit and I love them way more than you ever did" so she hasn't really got a leg to stand on? So she's gonna just keep her mouth shut this time.) 

\--> you might think someone who has as part of their literal legend their physical attractiveness/aesthetic beauty might manage to avoid serious attractiveness/appearance issues but you would be wrong. At this point Vanyel has if anything totally internalized his appearance - subconsciously - as at best something he has to make up for and at worst an indicator of his secret weakness/unworthiness. The only things he owns that are nice, anymore, are his Whites. Nobody notices this, really, because he lives in uniform and he is INCREDIBLY overworked. Like, INCREDIBLY OVERWORKED. 

As such Tylendel has only juuuust started to NOTICE there seems to be a . . . thing . . . where when not in uniform Van appears to relegate himself to old clothes, or clothes where the fit is off, or otherwise very plain and he is noooot actually pleased about this. 

He is also not entirely sure how to address it because if he's not doing Work Outfits he will actually more often than not fail to notice or think about clothing so it's not like there wouldn't be a whiff of hypocrisy or at least apparent hypocrisy if he tried to point out that This Might Not Be A Good Indicator. In his case it's literally just that unless he's thinking about having an effect on an audience (so to speak) his brain is just like "this bit of cognitive load is too much who cares": it really does not mean the same thing. This has always been the case! Like Tylendel is AWARE he's hot, but aesthetics has never been ~*part of his identity*~. Whereas it totally has been part of Van's, except now apparently Van's brain has decided That's Bad And He Should Be Sorry and is taking appropriate steps and Tylendel does not LIKE this. 

\--> prior to showing up for plot purposes, the rest of Vanyel's family has literally never seen Tylendel in person. Part of the reason for that is because the second one of them says SHIT that's out of line to Tylendel Vanyel knows he's going to want to actually kill them and he doesn't like feeling that way about his family even when they ARE being impossible and frustrating because DEEP DOWN INSIDE Vanyel still just really wants his family to love him. 

So in fact part of the reason (discussed on the tumblr post-thread from yesterday) that Tylendel is quite so willing to switch to showing teeth (so to speak) is that if he's defending HIMSELF Van feels less compelled to defend him and thus less compelled to attack his parents and make everything really messy. Because he's able to swat Withen and even Treesa to an extent around and then drop it when they back off, whereas Van only has either Enduring His Parents or Losing His Shit as available modes.


End file.
